NFL to honor John Madden throughout Thanksgiving Day broadcasts

From awarding victory turkey legs to the star gamers to being the voice on the NFL’s greatest Thanksgiving Day video games for years, John Madden was synonymous with the vacation he so adored.

The NFL is making {that a} lasting tribute by honoring the late broadcaster by launching the “John Madden Thanksgiving Celebration” to start on the primary Thanksgiving following his loss of life final December.

“Nobody cared extra or contributed extra to our sport than John Madden,” Commissioner Roger Goodell mentioned in a press release. “Honoring his reminiscence and influence on the NFL is necessary and Thanksgiving Day brings all the parts vital to John to life – household, soccer, meals and enjoyable.”

The league plans for the Thanksgiving tribute to Madden to be an annual occasion beginning Nov. 24, when there can be particular segments on all three broadcasts by CBS, Fox and NBC devoted to Madden.

A recording of Madden discussing Thanksgiving and the vacation’s relationship to soccer will function the lead-in to the three video games that day: Buffalo at Detroit on CBS, the Giants at Dallas on Fox and New England at Minnesota on NBC.

Madden labored for all three of these networks throughout a profession that included 20 video games on Thanksgiving when he labored at CBS and Fox.

“There is not any place that I might somewhat be immediately on Thanksgiving than proper right here, proper now, at a soccer sport,” Madden mentioned on the Bears-Lions Thanksgiving sport in 1997. “There are simply sure issues that go collectively: the turkey, the household, the custom, soccer. … And we have now all of it immediately.”

Madden started the custom of handing out a turkey leg to the star of the sport starting in 1989 when Philadelphia’s Reggie White obtained it following a win over Dallas.

The next 12 months Madden gave out victory legs to Dallas’ Emmitt Smith and Troy Aikman and joked that he wished he had extra for the offensive linemen. A barbecue proprietor in Texas took up the problem and created a man-made six-legged turkey.

For this 12 months’s video games, the “Madden Participant of the Recreation” will obtain a trophy and a $10,000 donation of their title from the NFL Basis to the youth or highschool soccer program of their selection.

There will even be “John Madden Thanksgiving” logos on the 25-yard strains and a patch on the uniform jerseys that includes a picture of Madden together with his fist up within the air.